Cobalt Core 1
Image: Brace Yourself Publishing

Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Kate looks back on a 2023 game from Rocket Rat that very nearly slipped through our net...

Hey, you. If I've pitched this title correctly, you're here because, like me, you are a thrall to the roguelike/lite deckbuilding genre. You're in the right place, my friend, and I won't waste your time: Today, we're here to talk about Cobalt Core, one of the most underrated games of last year.

Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube764k
Watch on YouTube

Cobalt Core came out at the start of November 2023, and the first I heard about it was my partner practically kicking down my office door and telling me to download it right that second. But other than that, I barely heard about it at all. Slowly, slowly, the news seemed to trickle out that it was A Game Worth Checking Out, because PC Gamer took a month to tell people about it, Eurogamer gave it a 5/5 in mid-December, Ars Technica wrote in January that the game's only downside was that the soundtrack was too catchy, and the AV Club only ended up highlighting how much they enjoyed it as a holiday retrospective. And now, I'm doing it, too. Better late than never, eh?

Cobalt Core 2
Image: Kate Gray / Brace Yourself Publishing

As you've no doubt gathered, it's a roguelite deckbuilder. You get zero points for that astute observation. And, as a fan of the genre, you're probably well aware that every roguelite deckbuilder has to bring a twist or a gimmick to the table, like a bottle of wine to a fancy party. And you're right: Cobalt Core has a twist. I'll get to that in two paragraphs, because first, we need a little background.

Cobalt Core is a game set in space, in a time loop — a narrative framing device common to roguelikes and lites, because it nicely explains why you're trying to do this one thing over and over again. You are the crew of a small and scrappy spaceship, trying to destroy the source of this gosh-darned time loop, which the characters are fully and frustratedly aware of. Along the way, you'll navigate through nodes of battles and choices, Slay the Spire-style, which grant you new cards, new abilities, and new artifacts, Cobalt Core's version of STS's relics. As a deckbuilder aficionado, you'll feel right at home with all of this stuff almost instantly, even if the space theming throws you off at first. It's all intimately familiar. It's just in space.

So, there you are, on this spaceship, with a small crew of animal-ish cuties and a friendly AI called cat.exe. Your crew is three characters, each providing a unique deck specced around their specialty, such as the ability to use auto-firing drones, or put up shields, or draw cards, or move around the battlefield. You see, unlike Slay The Spire, you are not side-by-side with your opponents, but top-and-tail — them on top, you on tail. And here is where that twist, that gimmick, comes into play.

Usually, in these deckbuilder-type games, you can deal damage, take damage, and block. Sometimes there are other things, like poison, or healing, or whatever. But Cobalt Core adds movement, either to the left or right, as another factor in the strategy. Your opponent deals damage in a straight line down, which means that you can move far enough in one direction and you might even avoid damage altogether, or put up shields on one particular part of your ship to block that damage entirely. This extra arrow in your tactical quiver turns the battle into a ballet — step left, deal damage, step right, shield, and so on. There's even a difference between immediate movement and bankable movement, which you can save up for when you need it. Throw in some neat extras, like artifacts that trigger damage upon movement, and you can get some real nice synergy goin'.

Cobalt Core 3
Image: Kate Gray / Brace Yourself Publishing

A beautifully balanced strategy is the main pull of a deckbuilder, to be sure, and Cobalt Core has it, despite its relatively short runs. It's as much of a thrill to pick cards, put off healing, and collect artifacts as it is in Slay the Spire or Monster Train or whatever your pick of deckbuilders is. But that's not what won my heart, in all honesty. The thing that puts Cobalt Core ahead of Slay The Spire in one respect is its storytelling — something Slay The Spire doesn't really have.

That time loop framing paves the way for some excellent dialogue. Your tiny wee characters, all of whom are in surprisingly good humour considering their circumstances, banter and bicker with your opponents, some of whom are pirates and rogue AIs, and some of whom are leather-jacket-wearing, alternate universe versions of... yourselves. Even better, while the battles are going, your crew will comment on your moves, your cards, and your failures, celebrating your near-misses and thanking Space God for your artifacts when they proc in your favour.

This chatty sidebar is something I haven't seen in a game like this before, because usually all goes quiet when you're fighting, but it made me wonder: why don't we talk more in fights? Why don't characters acknowledge your decisions and mistakes?

The answer is pretty simple: human behaviour is hard to write for. How do you correctly, accurately predict when your player 'made a mistake', or when they combined two cards in a clever way? You can do it... but it's a pain in the arse. You'll end up missing a lot of edge cases and card combos you didn't know about. But Cobalt Core manages it just fine, and it's darn impressive work to write reactive dialogue that still makes sense, and doesn't feel like a bunch of triggers being set off.

It helps that it's also supremely funny, too, with an excellently written cast. Isaac is a goat with a holographic horn, and he names every single one of his drones. If they get shot down, he just tells you, "Well, I didn't like [Juice/Gary/Scoobert] that much anyway." Books is a bespectacled little wizard with the energy of a five-year-old who just found his parents' secret stash of caffeine pills. Wizbo is a... possum (?) dressed like a wizard, who keeps making up spells while shooting at you from his spaceship. I love them all deeply.

And thus ends my pitch for Cobalt Core. It's small in size, but really brilliantly put together; the way that damage, shields, health, and movement tie together makes Cobalt Core one of those deceptively deep games that's simple-ish on the surface, but combinatorially complex, like one of those tricky but gorgeous wooden puzzle boxes that you get for Christmas sometimes. I just adore it. The addition of movement might seem like a small step for games... but it's one giant leap for gamekind.